SwapDrive Acquires WhaleMail

SwapDrive, a provider of online storage and file management software and services, is acquiring WhaleMail, Inc., a Reston, Va.-provider of online file delivery and storage. Under terms of the agreement, SwapDrive is buying the company, its technology and its customer base of more than 50,000 users. Additional terms of the deal of were not disclosed.

John Burton, managing director of Updata Capital, Inc., has also joined the SwapDrive board of directors as a result of the acquisition.

WhaleMail’s technology offers an instantaneous method for SwapDrive users to electronically distribute large files to an email address using a Web browser. Once integrated into the SwapDrive Corporate Web, the WhaleMail functionality will eliminate the time and costs associated with FTP, compressing a file or shipping disk media through an expensive courier service.

“The traditional method of using FTP to send large files is a cumbersome and unreliable process that is dependent on a remote host server to transmit data. Through WhaleMail’s technology, users are afforded easy and secure access to a virtual hard drive via the Internet to transfer and download files as large as 75 MB — in almost real time,” said Marc Wallace, chief executive officer of SwapDrive. “Since SwapDrive customers are business users who can benefit from a reliable and secure method of data transfer, we knew WhaleMail would be an excellent fit for the SwapDrive Corporate Web.”

Using their SwapDrive account, customers will be able to deliver oversized files to any email address. Recipients will then receive direct links to virtually stored data in place of a file attachment which risks corruption during transfer or may be too large for transmission. The WhaleMail technology saves space on a user’s hard drive or company mail server by eliminating the use of memory capacity by large files, such as graphics, engineering drawings or PowerPoint presentations.

“Because many of WhaleMail’s customers are engineers and designers who must share and collaborate on CAD documents, time is of the essence. Constantly emailing very large documents takes a lot of time and server bandwidth,” said Wallace. “WhaleMail customers can rest assured that we will provide the same high quality of service as they previously experienced and also benefit from the document sharing and redlining capabilities that we recently added to the Corporate Web service in our DesignPACK solution.”

Founded in 1999, the Washington, D.C.-based SwapDrive is a Web storage solutions provider. The company has partnered with companies including Exodus Communications, EMC, Veritas and StorageNetworks, Inc. SwapDrive maintains a Web site at http://www.SwapDrive.com.